I just recently realized that I’ve never purchased blood oranges, despite being kind of obsessed with the idea of them (along with Meyer lemons). They feel like…fancy citrus? Citrus fruit for wealthy folks??

Regardless, I literally never see them at my grocery store, but magically stumbled upon a few recently and so snatched them up with absolutely zero idea of what I was going to make. After poring through tons of recipes, I ended up coming back to the idea of a kind of souped-up gin & tonic. A refreshing blood orange cocktail for spring!

This recipe feels like an adaptation of the French gimlet, which I *also* love. But while the original version of this recipe calls for ginger ale, I’ve substituted tonic water as I am firmly NOT a ginger fan. UGH. And the tonic water lengthens the drink (makes it less potent) so you can enjoy it for longer.

One of the keys here is to make sure you’re using fresh lime juice. Trust me when I say that the bottled lime juice you keep in your fridge will not work in this drink. I’ve tried. It’s terrible. If you don’t have fresh limes then either omit it or save this recipe for another day. *shudders*

In a true signal of adulthood, I buy bananas about every other week solely to let them get overripe and bake with them. But here’s the thing—I don’t actually like banana bread. It doesn’t appeal to me at all. So what I’ve ended up doing as a non-banana bread lover is accidentally starting a tradition of finding souped-up banana bread recipes to bring you.

Chai spices have been a favorite flavor combination of mine since I was in college and discovered Starbucks’ chai lattes (grande nonfat no-water chai, please!). So when I saw this recipe I knew I had to give it a try…the fragrant combination of the traditional cinnamon and ginger, with the warmth of cardamom and kick of black pepper and cloves is just divine.

So here’s another amazing OTT (over the top) banana bread recipe for you, and it’s definitely going in my regular rotation. I’ve linked to a few of my favorite other banana bread recipes at the bottom of this post if you’d like to give them a try as well!

One thing I’ll tell you up front—don’t be intimidated by the number of ingredients in the recipe. The lazy person in me kept me from trying this recipe for quite a while after I’d bookmarked it, but everything comes together very quickly and simply.

And of all things it’s a *bark* recipe, which I am historically just “meh” on. But this delicious blend of rich, bittersweet chocolate and punchy peanut butter chips, lifted up slightly by nutty tahini and a crunch of sea salt, is like amazing not-actually-that-bad-for-you crack.

The most critical thing in making this amazing is to use a high-quality dark chocolate. Since the chocolate is the base and the entire carrier of this recipe, using a cheaper and lower quality kind will definitely result in a mediocre product. That doesn’t mean you need something insanely expensive, just more along the lines of Ghiradelli vs. Hershey’s. Trust me, it’s worth it!

I love this so much that I’d love to find a way to make it just as yummy, but using a healthier alternative to peanut butter chips. The actual chemistry of how bark sets isn’t really my area of expertise, so I’m going to do some fiddling and researching to see if this is feasible…as much as I love peanut butter chips, they’re not super great for me and this would be quite a really nice healthy indulgence.

It’s been over a month since I’ve posted something healthy, which feels like a pretty good indication of what my life choices have been like lately :p #allcarbsallthetime

Between work, travel, and this disgustingly cold polar vortex weather, I’ve been indulging a bit too much, and right now I feel the need to get my eating back on track. But it’s still gross cold and so these healthy options have to be delicious as well. Behold—soft, sweet, salty, healthy feta & sweet potato hash!

The flavors of the mellow sweet potato, the bitterness of the greens, and the saltiness of the feta play really well together, and the dried herbs add depth to the overall flavor profile. It’s a really comforting dish, something easy to throw together and really healthy, but feels like you’ve done something special. Here’s to good choices 🙂

Wow, I hadn’t realized how long it’s been since I’ve talked about my two true loves together—food and travel!

Today I want to show you a little bit about my trip to Sweden, which was completely impromptu and ended up being completely epic. What started as snagging a cheap flight ($286 from Newark to Gothenburg) led us to stumbling on renting a sailboat on Airbnb and spending a long weekend on the beautiful waters of the Gothenburg Archipelago in the North Sea. This was my first time visiting a Scandinavian country, but I’ve since been to Norway a couple times so expect more on delicious Scandinavian pastries to come!

We landed in Gothenburg and our sailboat captain, Patrik, picked us up at the airport. While our ultimate goal was getting out on the water as soon as possible, Patrik wanted us to get a little glimpse of the city—plus we needed to stock up on provisions. We were starving, so first we sat at a lovely outdoor cafe and tried AMAZING fish cakes in a brown butter sauce, with mashed potatoes and peas. We had their salad bar as well, with a refreshing local beer to wash everything down with. I was really excited about the fish cakes, because they were made with salmon and white fish and no shellfish, which is crazy hard to find.

Ever since spending a few days in Sweden sailing the Gothenburg archipelago and devouring fresh smoked herring and cardamom-laced pastries the entire time, I’ve been meaning to try my hand at Swedish baking myself. This recipe initially came to me as a simple Swedish vanilla bread, but to me that was leaving out the most iconic flavor of Swedish baking, ground cardamom.

So I did us all a favor and made it Swedish vanilla cardamom bread 🙂

So I’ve been playing around with this recipe for a while, both in tweaking the flavors, but also in getting the texture to turn out correctly. The original recipe had way too much flour, which resulted in a much drier dough than I liked, and overall it’s taken some trial and error to perfect. But the time was worth it, and this recipe results in a lovely simple subtly-spiced bread. It’s not really sweet at all, just a nice snack at any point in the day.

About a year ago—after over a decade as a die-hard wine drinker—I fell in love with gin.

I KNOW. But hear me out. I’ve noticed that gin is a very polarizing subject. I’ve met tons of people who absolutely love it, and a similar amount of people who tell me I’m insane and gin is the grossest thing ever. I haven’t really found anyone who’s like, “yeah, it’s cool sometimes”. Apparently gin is an all-or-nothing 🙂 But I kind of think that’s because people maybe haven’t had a great gin cocktail. In my experience over the last year, gin mixes so well with so many different flavors, and so that’s what led to today’s adventure.

I was first introduced to the idea of a gimlet via my Cheese, my bff in Los Angeles…and actually before I became a gin drinker. We capped off an awesome girls’ weekend with homemade pizza (courtesy of her now-hubby) and French gimlets. A French gimlet basically adds elderflower liqueur like St. Germain to a regular gimlet, which is gin and lime juice. I fell in love…and three drinks later she told me I’d have to Uber to LAX because there was no way she was taking me now 🙂

So today I bring you a lovely twist on a regular gimlet, where we take the bright botanical gin and fresh lime juice combo, and add to it a delicious herby rosemary simple syrup. It takes like 5 minutes to make the simple syrup yourself and you’ll feel pretty badass. Then top it off with some tonic water to lighten it up and provide fun fizz. Behold—the fizzy rosemary gimlet!

Friends, we are now venturing into a new realm of foodie-ism. The world where we think of delicious flavors to add to cocktails and then MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Not a bad world, amirite???

Ever since moving to Louisville for my new job and working on spirit brands like Woodford Reserve, Tequila Herradura, and Old Forester, I’ve been introduced to a much wider world of awesome cocktails…new flavors, types of ingredients, ways of preparing, and so much more. I’m fascinated by all the new combinations that are out there. And now that I’ve dipped my toe in by making old fashioneds at home (using pre-made syrup that’s amazing), I feel like I can try and branch out more on my own.

So when I saw this recipe for rosemary simple syrup, I was intrigued. I happened to have some rosemary sitting in my fridge, so on a whim I got up off the couch and put the saucepan on the stove. And five minutes later (plus 20 minutes of steeping on its own), I had my own homemade rosemary simple syrup. I felt like a magician.

The other great thing about this recipe (besides how fast it comes together) is that it doesn’t take much in the way of special ingredients. Other than red or yellow curry paste (which I think most grocery stores have now, and you can easily get online), everything should already be in your kitchen.

A couple years ago, my sister sent me an email out of nowhere with this recipe and a note that said “This has to be on your blog!” And I’ll be honest…it kind of took me a while to get to it.

But I played around with the recipe, making for a co-worker on maternity leave, for my own personal consumption, and then to take to work. And somehow never got around to posting the final version that I love dearly.

And guys, these cookies are weird. They have no leavening agent and no eggs…which shouldn’t work, but it totally does. In fact, they could be vegan if you substituted coconut oil for butter (though I haven’t tried that from a texture standpoint).

Side note, this cookie dough is AMAZING. Like, try not to eat it all raw before baking it, I DARE YOU. And because there are no eggs, you don’t have to worry about raw egg in it (which…I don’t, but I know some people do).

One of the great things about this kind of recipe, where you make the dough into a log and then slice pieces off, is that you can make parts of it at a time super easily. So the last time I made this, I baked up about half the dough right after dinner, and then two days later sliced up the rest and baked it when I had my whole family over for dinner again. Bonus points because they’re really quite healthy.

Welcome to my little corner of the internet! I created this blog for people who love cooking & baking but are challenged to find the time and energy to do it. Recipes run the gamut from super healthy to indulgent, but the focus is on using REAL food no matter what.